Formed in 2000, Robots In Disguise are an electro band based in London and Berlin. Dee Plume and Sue Denim are the only two members as of 2008, apart from a drummer named Ann Droid. Sue and Dee met whilst students in Liverpool, and have taken their stage names from the word for a writer's pen name: "nom de plume" (Dee Plume) and the word for an assumed name "pseudonym" (Sue Denim). Also found at mySpace & forum.

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15 July 2008

Robots in Disguise - But What Planet Are They From?

Culturedeluxe recently attended the inaugural Mighty Boosh festival at Hop Farm in Kent. Friends of the show Robots in Disguise (they starred in both the 'Electro' and 'Nanageddon' episodes of the show) Sue Denim and Dee Plume respectively (geddit?) were in a somewhat quirky mood having just left the stage (and done a few too many interviews).

PR Lady: This is Bryony and Chris from Culturedeluxe.

Us: Hi there, pleased to...

RID: Wow! You two have the bluest eyes. Don’t they have blue eyes? (*PR lady nods solemnly*). You really do. Wow.

Us: Er... thanks. They’re the same ones, we’re brother and sister.

RID: Really? That’s great!

Us: Thanks, we think it’s kind of freaky ourselves, but there you go. Great set, by the way.

RID: Thanks!

Us: So, you’re in the middle of a UK tour, off to T in the Park, Surfstock, Reading and Leeds Festivals, how’s that all going?

RID: Great. Hey, is that a programme for today? *Points to programme hanging round Christopher’s neck.* How come we didn’t get one of those!? Let’s have a look!

*Grabs programme off Christopher.*

RID: This is brilliant! Hey, it’s got pictures. Ooh, and the thing it attaches to is round your neck! That’s cool too. Can we have this?

The 11:30 train to Paddock Wood on a Saturday morning would normally, I imagine, contain a scattered group of people visiting their mothers, some bored kids, and a couple of dotty old men of the type who write outraged letters to the Kent Gazette every time a truck drives through the village. On this particular gusty Saturday morning, these good folk were probably wondering why their quiet little train was filled with odd people in gold lycra jumpsuits, fur coats, and blacked out faces, and in a couple of cases, probably deciding whether they were more outraged or mortified, and deciding exactly which factors shouldn’t be allowed.

After making the trek towards the farm (“Oh I won’t take the bus, a 15 minute walk isn’t that long! Oh, you actually meant 45 minutes”), I find Christopher trying to make his press pass look obvious to passing nubile lycra-clad festival goers while simultaneously giving the impression that having a press pass is something which happens to him so often that it’s getting really rather dull. It’s not dull. It’s great. We were wearing orange wristbands, which automatically makes us cooler than you. Yes, YOU.

Ahem. We arrived just in time for the opening act, the frankly baffling Polar Bear. Well, I suppose it might have been less baffling had I been familiar with the cello, mandolin and saxophone driven synth-backed free jazz scene, but I missed that article in Smash Hits last year. The result was a conversation with Christopher which went something like “I don’t get it.” “Well, it’s jazz, innit.” “It seems good.” “I wish I could tell whether the drummer is supposed to be speeding up and slowing down like that.” Overall poll said: This is great! It’s so experimental! Yeah, is that the right thing to say...? Brilliant!

Then we tried to find the media tent. No-one knew where it was, no-one knew where they were, no-one cared. By that point we’d seen more lycra than anyone should have to deal with on a hot day, and one sock stuffed down a lady’s lycra suit which had migrated considerably from its intended location. Ew.

Aha! Small tent in the strange limbo between ‘In’ and ‘Out’ of the backstage area – this had to be it. After Christopher had reprimanded me in a hissing undertone for taking as many free cans of coke out of the complimentary fridge as I could carry, we hung around vaguely looking for famous people. Didn’t take long – soon we see Tim Burgess wandering around being amiable. Our slightly baffled looking PR guy assured us that we were definitely in line for an interview, so during the resulting wait, we listened to Robots In Disguise from a distance. Very good, strident yet tuneful angry girl music of the indie-rock variety. Wish we could have seen them actually performing.

Eventually we wander back in to see what’s going on, to see a very tired Tim, and a PR guy looking at us with the expression of someone who’s sure he’s seen us somewhere before. Upon enquiry, Tim was no longer doing interviews, but if we hung around then there might be an opportunity with The Kills. We looked at the Kills, thickly surrounded by media and presenting a picture remarkably like the cover of White Blood Cells. In the distance, we hear the atrocious compere announcing White Denim. Sod this, we both decided, we could be stuck in this tent all day.

So we pottered out to see White Denim, and an excellent choice it proved to be. Describing their act as the ‘first rock and roll act they’d seen today’ they launched into an eclectic stream of guitar consciousness which seemed to owe less to rock and roll and more to the auditory hallucinations commonly associated with schizophrenia. The songs migrated apparently randomly between the instruments, with vocals being added thoughtfully, provocatively, and possibly at random. The genius of the whole thing was how three incredibly different looking guys who seemed utterly unaware of each other could come on, play unrelated musical parts, and still convince the audience they weren't members of different bands who’d got their set times mixed up. It was great, though. With moments of real old school seventies soul mixed in with other moments of unrelated indie madness and good old fashioned rock and roll, the whole thing was astonishingly convincing. Fans of the Guillemots should note that these guys are kind of like them, but actually good.

At this point, we decide to see if we can actually talk to any of the artists – after all, we were important people now. Back to the press tent! And yes, there are people – namely Robots In Disguise.

“But we don’t know anything about them!” I hiss under my breath to Christopher as we’re ushered over. “Aren’t they from Liverpool or something? And how come there’s three of them, I thought there were only supposed to be two?”

“We’ll make it up! And don’t forget to tell them what a great set they did!”

“But we didn’t see them!”

“So?”

Turns out that they’d been put through so many interviews already that they practically interviewed themselves, allowing us enough time to saunter out back to the field. As Christopher wandered over to the comedy tent, I settled myself down for The Kills and Gary Numan.

The Kills rocked. As Jamie Hince stood in a carefully perfected blues pose looking cool as hell, Alison Mosshart stalked around the stage, the wind whipping her hair and cloak around like a valkyrie, looking cool as hell. The music was low, driving and powerful blues-based psych-rock of the dark basement kind. Most crowdgoers didn’t seem to know what to do with this unfamiliarly unjangly stuff, so adopted the traditional shoe-gazing, body-rocking motion associated with the more extreme end of the psychedelic stoner concerts, then went a bit mad for the occasional fast bits. As a fan of low energy music which makes you feel semi-conscious and a little like someone’s drugged you and stolen your wallet, I loved this set. I have to admit to having felt a little sceptical at how this sort of music would translate to a field full of festival going hysterical kids, but as usual my worry was neither warranted nor needed.

Since I seemed to have lost my brother, I decided to hang around for Gary Numan, with the uncomfortable feeling that I might be the only person in the field old enough to remember anything about him at all. I needn’t have worried. Looking like a goth skater and acting like a gay icon, Gary was loving every minute of his festival time, and since most of the kids were at least familiar with the modern take on what Gary had helped to start, and since all the girls probably bought Sugababes as their very first album when they were 10, the whole set went down with an energy which lit up the whole field. When ‘Cars’ was played, the field went mental. When ‘Are Friends Electric’ came up, there was a really entertaining interlude of lots of people jumping up and down going “Omigod I love this song!”, then stopping, looking at each other in bafflement, bopping up and down in a puzzled sort of way, and then, in some cases, the penny dropping with a bang. It was great. The whole set was great. I love Gary. I was discovered and rescued by Christopher as I stood in the press tent afterwards dancing nervously from foot to foot muttering “He’s there! He’s there! Wow...”, hustling me quickly out before I made a complete tit of myself.

So far, it had been a great day for music. Every act had been different, but equally good. We were about ready for a slightly disappointing set, and I’m sorry to say that The Charlatans filled the gap admirably. It’s not that I have anything against them. They seem like a lovely group of fellas, and I’d really want to have a drink with Tim, who dedicated one of the songs to ‘the group of girls who just broke into my dressing room’, bless him. But the trouble is, "amiable britpop" doesn’t really stand up to an hour long set after you’ve just heard some really awesome stuff. They played their well known stuff; people enjoyed it; we particularly enjoyed their most recent single, although possibly not in the expected way. Here’s a game for you – the next time you hear ‘The Misbegotten’, try singing ‘Blue Monday’ over the top of it, complete with introductory synth, words, phrasing, everything. It fits perfectly, to a hilariously entertaining degree. It’s a good song, but I prefer the original. We spent most of the set sitting on the grass chatting, during which we were entertaining the idea of Tim Burgess bumping into Jarvis Cocker, who was around the festival doing a DJ Set. (“Tim.” “Jarvis.” “Still going I see.” “Yes, yes. You?” “Yeah, you know how it is...”).

So as I hung around for the Peaches DJ set (awesome – you just keep watching her to see what she’ll do next), Christopher pottered back to comedy again. The Mighty Boosh Band set was somewhat delayed due mostly, I think, to their astonishing pyrotechnics. I unfortunately missed most of the opening due to being rammed into a crowed of annoyed photographers near the front of the stage who weren’t allowed on, mostly, and quite unreasonably I thought, because we might get set on fire.
Eventually things kicked off however, and madness ensued. Half the time I couldn’t really take photos because I was too busy laughing. I consider myself to be the winner nevertheless, as Noel and Julian wandered about doing pastiches on every form of music known to man (or at least to them), with guest appearances by most of the people who’d already played, and co-star Rich Fulcher wandering around dressed as everything from a silver robot with an extendible... er, well, anyway, to some kind of something dispensing funk out of nipples all over his body.

If I was writing this under any other kind of circumstances, my doctor could probably use this review in my psychiatric report. The most pleasant surprise for me was discovering that Julian Barratt could actually play pretty good jazz guitar. Cool. The rest of the time was hilarity and fun and generally just jolly good laughs for all. There’s no point in reviewing the Boosh Band as a band, but as an act I’d definitely recommend them.

As we pottered over to the car, we worried vaguely about the fact that the last train had already left from the station, there were very few cars in the car park, and most of the festival goers had the look of those who didn’t realise that night buses didn’t exist in the countryside. Then we went home.